Five philosophical razors for clearer thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia article titled Philosophical razor which defines one as:

 

“a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (shave off) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon or avoid unnecessary actions.

 

The best known is Occam’s razor. Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a more specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:  

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

On March 23, 2026 I blogged about it in a post titled Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior.

 

And there is Alder’s razor:

 

“If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.”

 

There is Grice’s razor:

 

“Address what someone meant to say instead of the literal meaning of the words.”

 

There is Hitchens’ razor:

 

“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

 

An article at Life Lessons is titled 9 Philosophical razors you need to know. Another article by Chris Meyer at The Mind Collection is titled 11 Philosophical razors to simplify your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

How we describe the solar system is a good example of Occam’s razor. As shown simply above, once we had an earth-centered view using circular orbits. For Geocentrism Wikipedia says:

 

“The resultant system, which eventually came to be widely accepted in the west, seems unwieldy to modern astronomers; each planet required an epicycle revolving on a deferent, offset by an equant which was different for each planet. It predicted various celestial motions, including the beginning and end of retrograde motion, to within a maximum error of 10 degrees, considerably better than without the equant.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The modern, simpler, heliocentric version, is shown above. It has elliptical orbits that result from gravitational attraction.

 

 

The razor was adapted from an image at OpenClipart.  The Ptolemaic model and solar system were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a mores specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:   

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

It is discussed an article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on December 30, 2016 titled Quote Origin: Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity. He attributes it to being from 1980 by computer programmer Robert J. Hanlon. But he points to similar statements as far back as 1757 by philosopher David Hume.

 

Jono Hey has a cartoon about it at his Sketchplanations. And there is a serious discussion by Nathan Ballantyne and Peter H. Ditto at Midwest Studies in Philosophy for August 2021 in an article simply titled Hanlon’s Razor.

 

The straight razor in my cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

A self-contradictory warning sign on a fence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a recent visit to Hawaii I saw the self-contradictory sign shown above warning there should be NO SIGNS ON FENCE. At flickr there was another that also referred to Section 264 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That contradiction can be removed by noting an exception, as is shown above. Back on March 27, 2027 I blogged about A little lie that many book publishers tell, which is book pages marked THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.

 

Missing warnings on an envelope for junk mail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I received the envelope shown above. It has official-looking warnings not to fold or bend, but not the typical one which is:

 

“Do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The statement inside admits it is NOT actually from Social Security.  

 

But what does spindle mean? The Merriam Webster dictionary says it is a transitive verb:

 

“to impale, thrust, or perforate on the spike of a spindle file.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An image of a spindled sheet of paper is shown above.

 

There is a discussion of the whole warning in an article by Ed Dufton at lehighvalleylive on October 10, 2010 titled Updating Peanuts. It explains that government checks used to be printed on punch cards, and spindling could add an undesired hole.  

 

An image of a spindle came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

I am not going to throw out my black plastic spatula

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Food Network on October 25, 2024 there is an article by Christine Byrne titled Why you might want to throw away your black plastic kitchen utensils and takeout containers. And there is another article by Kristin Toussaint at Fast Company on November 1, 2024 more emphatically titled Why you should get rid of your black plastic spatula immediately. But there is still another article by Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz at Slate on November 4, 2024 titled I’m not throwing away my black plastic spatula. Potentially toxic flame retardants are a possible problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz. The problem here is a difference between a hazard (a potential problem) and a risk (a real problem). Getting bit by a rabid unicorn is a hazard, but the risk is negligible. There is yet another article by Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine on July 5, 2023 titled Aspartame and Cancer that explains how these two concepts differ:

 

“The difference between hazard and risk is important to understand in terms of this research. A good analogy I often go to is – a shark in a tank is a hazard, meaning that it can potentially cause harm in the right circumstance. But as long as you don’t swim in the tank with the shark, the risk is zero. Something happening chemically may be a hazard, but we need to know how the substance is metabolized, will it get to the target tissue and in what dose, and what compensatory mechanisms are there? A potential hazard can be of zero risk depending on exposure.”

 

Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls ten-foot poles that you couldn’t touch a person with

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You probably have heard the idiom that:

 

“I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.”

 

On February 16, 2023 the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has an article about a product recall titled KLIM recalls backcountry probes due to risk of severe injury or death. These KLIM A300 folding probes are 118” long (almost ten feet). They consist of seven ~17” sections that are supposed to be assembled to form a rigid pole which can be pushed into the snow (as shown above) to locate (touch) someone buried by an avalanche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The probe design is similar to, but much taller than that for a folding cane used by blind persons, as shown above. Reportedly the probes can fail to operate properly when deployed by rescuers.

 

Images of avalanche probing and a folding cane came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

How I masked an overly bright LED pilot light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Rolling Stone on February 13, 2023 there is an article by Ryan Bort titled Trump used ‘Classified’ folder as a lamp shade, lawyer says. Trump reportedly did this:

 

“He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night,” Parlatore said. “It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It’s not a classification marking. It’s not anything that is controlled in any way. There is nothing illegal about it.”

 

I have a handset for the landline phone sitting in a charger next to my bed. It has a yellow light (arrow) at the upper left corner that blinks when there is a message. So, I took a piece of black electrical tape, poked a small hole in it with a pin, and mostly covered up that light.    

 

When most people Trump’s age see a blue light, they think of a special in a Kmart store.

 

 

 

General or specific warnings (and disclaimers)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 1, 2022 there is an F Minus cartoon by Tony Carrillo showing a general WARNING sign with the following caption:

 

“This sign is a nice catchall option to protect you from lawsuits, ensuring that anyone who enters your place of business has been warned.”

 

There also are specific warnings, like the often referenced Far Side cartoon (by Gary Larson), BEWARE OF DOUG.  

 

Another generic one is the Quack Miranda Warning (for diet supplements), found at the very bottom of web pages:

 

“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

 

On September 19, 2022 there is the following silly statement by Donald J. Trump claiming a specific warning:

 

“The Radical Left controlled NARA (the National Archives and Records Administration), now becoming more famous than ever, placed a ‘Harmful Content Warning’ on The Constitution of the United States, labeling our Country’s governing document as ‘harmful,’ among other things. This Warning includes the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Remember, this is the group wrongfully complaining about me—and instigating the Raid on Mar-a-Lago.”

 

He linked to an article by intern Haley Stack at The Federalist on September 8, 2021 titled National Archives slaps ‘Harmful Content’ warning on Constitution, all other founding documents. But that topic already was discussed by Madison Dapcevich at Snopes back on September 10, 2021 in an article titled Did National Archives put ‘Harmful Language’ alert on US Constitution? Snopes noted it really was a generic warning, and linked to the NARA web page titled NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Content, which says you well may be offended by some things they post.

 

The bottom of every page in this blog has a light gray Disclaimer which begins:

 

“We don’t necessarily believe what we write, and neither should you…”

 

A sign of the times around Boise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine you are building a new subdivision. There are lots of contractors working on homes in various stages of completion. They want to park near where they are working. How can you politely warn them and other visitors that a home now is complete and occupied? The sign shown above is how Hayden Homes does it. I saw it in their new Baserri subdivision, just west of Cole and Lake Hazel Roads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Baserri the mailboxes are in clusters for a group of homes (like the set of sixteen shown above).

 

Don’t stick a ‘candle’ in your ear to remove excess wax

Sometimes I am amazed by the curious things people do and believe.

Ear candling or ‘coning’ involves sticking the bottom of a rolled-up wax-coated cloth cone in your ear (while lying on your side) and then lighting the other open top end – as is shown above. Over at Amazon you can buy a 2017 book by Vikki Kinsella titled Hopi Ear Candling: a complete home study course. The section describing how candles work says:

“The candle is inserted in the ear canal – always the narrow end first – and then the top of the candle is lit. The candle burns, sending smoke into the ear canal and this pushes out the air. The warmth will help the wax to soften and loosen any debris that is within the ear. The smoke can fill the ear and will help mucus and any other debris sitting within the sinus passages. The debris is dissolved and then can be drawn up through the ear by the pressure that has been created when the candle begins to burn. There is a small portion of the candle that does not burn and some of the debris will collect in this section.”

At the American Academy of Audiology web site on June 22, 2010 there was an Opinion Editorial  by Jackie Clark, Douglas L. Beck, and Walter Kutz titled Ear Candles and Candling: ineffective and dangerous. It discussed how the following four claims for ear candling are false:

1] Interconnections in the head allow the candles to drain the entire system through the ear.

2] Oxygen drawn through the candle will create a vacuum.

3] When a vacuum is created, it will pull residue out from the ear canal.

4] The method is safe, noninvasive, and effective. 

That editorial referred to a 1996 magazine article by D. R. Seely, S. M. Quigley, and A. W. Langman in Laryngoscope titled Ear Candles – Efficacy and Safety, which you can download here. They surveyed otolaryngologists and found the complications shown above in a chart.  

  

On February 18, 2010 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration had a consumer update titled Don’t get burned: stay away from ear candles. Health Canada also discussed Ear candling and advised:

“However, this old home remedy has no proven medical benefits and can cause serious injuries.”

Ear candling also just was thoroughly debunked by Edzard Ernst on page 165 of his 2019 book Alternative Medicine: a critical assessment of 150 modalities, which you can read at Google Books.

There is a 13-minute YouTube video by Clifford R. Olson from August 31, 2018 titled Do ear candles work to remove earwax? His answer is no. What got me started on this topic is another 15-minute YouTube video from Jonathan Jarry on September 3, 2019 titled Video – the strange case of the illegal ear candle.

The very last word on ear candles comes from a May 17, 1993 Seattle Times article by humor columnist Dave Barry titled I’m all fired up over a cure for ear wax. Dave said that if something went wrong, then the newspaper would use this headline:

MAN KILLED IN EAR BLAZE

Deserved to Die, Authorities Say

A ridiculous warning sign on the back of a dump truck

On my way home from the supermarket this morning I wound up stopped at a traffic light behind a dump truck with the ridiculous warning sign shown above. The only way to read it from 200 feet back would be with binoculars!   

Seeing it reminded me that a symbolic sign (like that shown above) is used for an equestrian crossing, because before you could process those two words you would get run over by a man riding on a horse.  

The equestrian warning sign came from DrStew82 at Wikimedia Commons.

What warnings should be in the operating instructions for a magic wand?

A product can be considered defective if there was inadequate instruction or lack of appropriate warnings. This is known as Failure to Warn. (You didn’t warn me not to do something dumb, so I did). It is discussed at great length in a law review article from 2000 titled Warning! Failure to Read this Article May Be Hazardous to Your Failure to Warn Defense. 

If we think about failure to warn and the Harry Potter books (involving use of magic wands), then we find a paradox. How could you write the instructions and warnings for an infinitely abusable product? Perhaps they would look something like this:

OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR MARK VII MAGIC WAND

1]   Read all operating instructions before using this product. Keep these instructions with the product at all times.

2]  Always wear eye protection when using this product.

3]   Grasp straight end firmly. Wave pointed end using a vigorous circular motion, and chant an appropriate incantation. Speak clearly and distinctly.

4]   Keep away from sparks and open flames. May be used to cause sparks, flames, lightning bolts, and volcanic eruptions.

5]   Use only with adequate ventilation. May be used to create breezes or minor gales. Avoid causing excessively high winds.

6]   Keep away from corrosive chemicals or excessive moisture.

7]   Do not place in microwave oven. May be used in place of microwave oven.

8]   Handle with care. Keep away from small children and attorneys.

9]   For external use only. May cause skin irritation. If swallowed, do not induce vomiting.

10] Hand wash only. Blot dry. Do not iron. Do not place in electric dryer. Do not dry clean. Do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate.

11] This product complies with applicable FCC regulations (Subpart J of FCC Part 15). It will not cause interference with electronic equipment - unless you want it to.

12] Do not place this product in the glove compartment of a motor vehicle, or any location where it will be subject to temperatures higher than 140 F or lower than 0 F.

13] To avoid hazard of electrical shock, do not open this product. Opening product voids warranty. Batteries are not included (or necessary).

14] This product is warranted to operate for a period of not less than three years, after which it will turn back into an ordinary soda straw.

15] Do not abuse this product. Don’t worry, be happy.

These instructions and warnings are much shorter than the infamous Standard Disclaimer supposedly written by R. Bruce Farnsworth. An image of a magic wand was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

A warning on the tailgate of a rally pickup truck

On February 6th, as I waited for the light to turn green so I could exit the Overland Park Shopping Center here in Boise, I was right behind a rally pickup truck. I used my cell phone to capture the image shown above. An upside-down warning at the bottom of the tailgate says:

“IF YOU CAN READ THIS THEN TURN THIS TRUCK OVER”

That SVT Raptor version of a Ford F150 has a 6.2 L (379 cubic inch) V8 engine which produces a very serious 411 horsepower.

A video where mediocre delivery overrides the content

Recently I watched Ben Angel’s 14-minute YouTube video titled How to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking and Become More Influential. The content is OK, but the delivery fails five ways.

First, the title is misleading, almost backwards. His content comes from an unreferenced  2014 blog post more accurately labeled 5 Things Influential Speakers Do That Others Don’t. Five steps with headings in the video (and their times) are:

Energetic Engagement (1:06)
Manage Your Look (6:49) 
Dealing with Attacks or Criticism (7:43)
Presentation Structure (9:03)
Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking (11:41)

About 4/5th of the way through Ben finally gets around to really talking about how to overcome your fear (using visualization).

Second, although he talks about managing your look his set is distracting. Left of the sofa is a tall cylindrical container of twigs, switches, or canes. Are they decorative, or are they kinkily functional (Fifty Shades of Grey)? At the right is an imposing unlit floor lamp that resembles a crane. The shade is just to the right of his head, so my eyes were repeatedly drawn to it. It is the Elephant in the Room. Eventually I started hoping Ben would act out the classic drunken party joke by putting the lampshade over his head. It looks like a nearly perfect fit. 

Third, the zoom keeps toggling from wide enough to show all his hand gestures to slightly too narrow, and then back again. That’s as irritating as a hearing a dripping faucet. There are 103 zoom changes, or an average of one every 7.2 seconds. I concluded whoever had the camera must have attended the Take Two Breaths and Then Zoom school of video production. Zoom is the visual equivalent of cowbell in a rock song like (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, and usually we don’t need More Cowbell.  

Fourth, some of his gestures aren’t engaged with the audience. Instead they are done from his viewpoint, and appear backwards to the audience. Watch at 2:30 when Ben says to picture a scale from zero (right) to ten (left). 

When you think about it for a minute that scale really should be vertical (higher is up, not to the left), since he needs to discuss how energy varies over time.

Also watch at 11:26 where he talks about visualization, and at 13:00 says rewind while his hands instead say fast forward. 

Ben needs a warning (shown above) to stop gesturing backwards. 

Fifth, at 1:03 he says to:

“Grab a pen and paper and jot this down. Step one: energetically engage your audience.”

That’s not engagement. It’s just smug superiority.

A label with four very specific assembly warnings

We received a box with the warning label shown above slapped on the outside. What made this product so dangerous during assembly?

It’s a 24” wide wooden wall rack with four Shaker pegs. Once it is installed it’s not very hazardous. 

The small parts that could cause choking were the two wood plugs for the screw holes. Those small parts with both sharp points and sharp edges were just a pair of drywall screws for mounting it on the wall.   

But, it came wrapped in a plastic bag and a 1/4” thick, 28” wide by 48” long piece of white foam plastic sheet. They didn’t warn that if you held that foam in front of your face you wouldn’t be able to see where you were going, and might slip, trip, and fall. (Also, if you wrapped a small child up in that sheet, it wouldn’t be safe to roll him down the stairs). 

The separate warnings for sharp points and edges are Too Much Information. They reminded me of an old Sidney Harris cartoon showing the side of a road with two adjacent, geologically specific warning signs that read:

FALLING
SEDIMENTARY
ROCK ZONE


FALLING
IGNEOUS
ROCK ZONE
1/4 MILE

In a housing development south of Boise I saw the signs shown above. I’ve seen signs with just diagonal red and white stripes at the end of roads before. Presumably there is some “Failure to Warn” case law that led then to also add the SIDEWALK ENDS words on a separate sign.

Don’t do this to your audience!

For Halloween, a warning to speakers from a 140 year old Currier & Ives lithograph.

Go out big with your last impromptu speech

Two decades ago ago Jerry Seinfeld joked that:

“According to most studies, people’s number-one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. ‘Death’ is number two! Now, this means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Last year I suggested it was time to bury that joke, but it keeps on being quoted, sometimes incorrectly. So, I suggest that it be replaced by another joke about public speaking and death that suggests how you should give your very last impromptu speech. That one appeared on page 120 of the late George Carlin’s 2002 book Napalm and Silly Putty:

“Now, you might be wondering why I would even suggest that someone can affect the manner and style of his death. Well, it’s because of a mysterious and little-known stage of dying, the two minute warning. Just as in football, two minutes before you die you receive an audible warning: ‘Two minutes! Get your sh*t together!‘ And the reason most people don’t know about this is because the only ones who hear it are dead two minutes later. They never get a chance to tell us.

But, such a warning does exist, and I suggest that when it comes, you use your two minutes to entertain and go out big. If nothing else, deliver a two-minute speech. Pick a subject you fell passionate about, and just start talking. Begin low-key, but, with mounting passion, build to a rousing climax. Finally, in the last few seconds, scream at those around you, ‘If these words are not the truth, may God strike me dead!‘ He will. Then simply slump forward and fall to the floor. Believe me, from that moment on, people will pay more attention to you.”  

You can watch a YouTube video of that comedy routine.

Read the manual

RTFM is a technical acronym. Stated politely it means to “read the fraking manual.” I saw a warning label with that basic message yesterday. It was on a battery powered manlift for use in orchards that was displayed at the Fruit Field Day over in Parma, Idaho. (A stepladder might seem cheaper, until you consider that workers spend about 30% of their time climbing up and down rather than doing useful work). 

Here is the Untrained Operator Hazard warning label. What does this have to do with public speaking? Well, on Monday Dave Paradi reported
preliminary results from his biennial survey of what annoys audiences about PowerPoint presentations. 

The table shows three top answers for his 2011 survey, and his two previous surveys in 2007 and 2009. With one exception, percentages reporting these problems have increased rather than decreased. That means that people aren’t bothering to read up on how to use PowerPoint effectively, although Dave provides lots of advice on how to do so.